Alligator Alcatraz: A Monument to Cruelty in the Heart of the Everglades
by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
In the Florida Everglades, Donald Trump has unveiled a new migrant detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” (Louallen, 2025).
It’s time to resurrect the term necropolitics, meaning the politics of death wielded by the state to determine who lives and who dies, who is allowed dignity, and who is cast into suffering or oblivion.
The last time I used this term was in reference to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s inhumane river buoys near Eagle Pass, a lethal barrier meant to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. I wrote then, in a blog titled “First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande“—based on a published piece by that same title (Chesky & Lozano, 2024)—where I ask how we can be proud of our country and allow this to happen?
Today, necropolitics rears its head once more—this time in the Florida Everglades, where Donald Trump has unveiled a new migrant detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” (Louallen, 2025). Surrounded by swampland and wildlife, the site is a literal and symbolic enclosure, built to house around 5,000 migrants in trailers and tents, in isolation and obscurity.
During a recent visit to the site, Trump joked:
“Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” he said, gesturing in a zigzag motion.
“And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.” (Gomez Licon, 2025)
When a former president laughs about migrants being hunted by alligators, he is not merely mocking human suffering—he is sending a message: that cruelty is permissible.
This is not humor. This is the normalization of dehumanization, delivered with a smirk. When a former president laughs about migrants being hunted by alligators, he is not merely mocking human suffering—he is sending a message: that cruelty is permissible, and even entertaining.
To joke about people—many of them children—fleeing war, violence, and poverty, and to reduce their desperate bid for safety to a punchline, is not just disturbing. It is authoritarian pageantry. It is a theater of the macabre. It is racist. It is white supremacy on steroids.
We’ve seen where this logic leads in history. First, the jokes. Then the walls. Then the cages. What comes next—camps? Ovens?
We cannot become numb.
There is nothing funny about people risking their lives to survive. There is nothing lighthearted about building prison compounds in ecologically sensitive swamps. And there is nothing acceptable about a political leader mocking the very people whose rights and humanity he systematically undermines.
This isn’t immigration policy.
This is punishment by design.
Miccosukee Business Council Chairman Talbert Cypress warns of the grave environmental and cultural impacts of the facility near where tribal families have lived for generations (Louallen, 2025).
The location—less than 1,000 feet from Miccosukee tribal villages—is not incidental. It is another instance of Indigenous sovereignty being trampled, as tribal leaders have made clear. Miccosukee Business Council Chairman Talbert Cypress warned of the grave environmental and cultural impacts: no meaningful environmental study has been conducted, and the facility sits in the heart of the Big Cypress National Preserve, where tribal families have lived for generations (Louallen, 2025).
To make matters worse, Trump has announced plans to replicate this model in Louisiana and Alabama (Louallen, 2025), expanding a blueprint of cruelty while bypassing legal due process and basic humanitarian norms.
Let this be the moment we refuse complicity through silence.
Let this be the moment we stand—unapologetically—with migrants, with Indigenous nations, with environmental defenders, and with all who resist this dystopian vision of America.
_____________________________________________________________
Copyright 2025 by Dr. Angela Valenzuela. Photo of Talbert Cypress used under “fair use” proviso of the copyright law. All other photos in the public domain.
References
Chesky, M., & Lozano, A. V. (2024, Feb. 25). First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande,
Gomez Licon, A. (2025, July 2). Trump jokes about immigrants being attacked by alligators during ‘Florida Alcatraz’ tour: “Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this’ Mr Trump said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion, The Independent.
Louallen, D. (2025, July 1). Florida tribe fights new ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant facility near Everglades homes: Tribal chairman says the facility threatens tribal camps and local ecosystem. ABC News